Afternoon lads,
Thanks to everyone’s efforts on Saturday, here is how the Occies day went down:
26th September 2009 was the day the Occies showed they were not going to fade silently into the night, but show the Surrey rugby league we WILL play each match this season and WILL play hard & fast rugby.
A warm Saturday in Battersea Park with 15 London Media men waiting at the changing rooms at 1.45pm was the perfect start for the occies assault on the league this year. With the oppo delayed due to traffic we even had time to do a proper warm up, a few grids, get our pacey back line familiar with the moves and let the forwards snort, snarl and work themselves up into a frenzied state ready to take on Caterhamians. Sam Parker epitomised London Media’s eagerness to get stuck into the oppo by not allowing Caterhamians time to run through any drills due to their late arrival.
The first 10 minutes saw media play with sensible heads – playing territory through Ben our new big and powerful fly half and then looking for 2nd and 3rd phases with the short ball for the forwards to smash it up. Mal Tucker was in fine form and needed at least 3 players to stop his barraging runs. Mike, Judge and Russ held our scrum steady and it was great to see media taking the game to the oppo.
The turning moment came after Tom our new flanker winning our lineout and the ball working its way to Ali who popped a short ball to Jonathan Davey, also on debut who smashed his way up the field like a wrecking ball giving us a chance to batter the Caterhamians line for a few minutes. After 5 mins of sustained pressure, we went blind & quick hands from Ali sent Shane Smith, another making his debut in for a great try in the corner. LMRFC 5-3.
Caterhamians kicked off again & media took it straight back up the pitch with Dan Poulson & Sam Parker running hard to make the distance and get us camped on their 22 again. The ref pinged Caterhamians for hands in the ruck and with a quick tap penalty fired through to Benny who barged his way over London media were in the mood and 10-3 up with 25 mins gone.
We should have kept our foot on the gas for the last 10 mins of the half as we had Caterhamians on the ropes as they did not like our pace or direct lines of running, but instead only added a penalty to take us into the break 13-3 up.
We lost our shape and structure a bit in the 2nd half and allowed Caterham to play with the ball which got them back into the game with a couple of easy tries, but there were still some crunching hits going in and if only we’d been able to run at their defence again I’m sure we would have done more damage, as it stood our backs didn’t get their hands on the ball in the 2nd half and spent 40 mins defending.
Andy Davey & Aidan showed their gas on numerous occasions and constantly beat defenders and I’m sure in a couple of games time we’ll have support runners with them to help rain in the tries.
Glyn came on to replace me after 65 mins (I had just accidentally speared their number 8 not realising he’d passed the ball a couple of seconds earlier, so thought it was best to make my bow then). Glyns presence was felt immediately by the oppo by absolutely smashing their outside centre and lifting the tempo.
The game was led from the front by big Sam parker who played like a man possessed and Ish who organised the team and managed superbly from the sidelines as he recovers from injury.
All in all, it was a great effort by the occies and a really enjoyable game with the final result being 13-27. lets get the same team out in 2 weeks time for the next league game against cranleigh and build from here. I for one loved being back in the LMRFC shirt and playing alongside great players at Battersea park.
Ben, Shane, Jonathan & Tom enjoyed the fine taste of a red eye back at the latch for breaking their LMRFC cherries and hopefully we’ll see them sucking back a few more throughout the season for their efforts!
MOTM was Ben who played with boundless energy and a big physical presence.
The next two weeks we have:
- 3rd October: Club friendly vs Streatham & Croydon 3rds (away)
- 10th October: Cranleigh 2nds (away)
So get them in your diary and see you all at training 8pm at battersea arena on Wednesday night.
Cheers,
JC